California GIS Maps and Data Sets

Ed-Data Partnership – offers financial, demographic, and performance data for California K-12 public schools at the state, county, school district, or individual school level. (You can search for data as far back as the 1992-93 school year.) The site will display some of the information in a pie-chart format.

DataQuest – much of the same data as Ed-Data, above, but it can be manipulated (in the good sense) to provide very specific data in a spreadsheet format. It also will compare the school or district data with the state and county data.

California Spatial Information Library (CaSIL) – pretty much the California GIS mother lode; the range of data here is extremely broad, while specialized and useful for advocates, including core political data.

California Statewide Database (SWDB) @ Berkeley – the redistricting database for the state of California; compiled from census data, free to those interested in the political and demographic characteristics of California.

FedStats: MapStats – wonderfully easy to use, your only a few clicks away from getting solid Census-based demographic data at the state, county, city and Congressional district level.

Thematic Maps – generate a downloadable map image showing basic demographic data at the national or state level.

HUD Enterprise Geographic Information Systems Portal (EGIS) – interesting implementation using ArcIMS technology, enables you to drill down from state to local level to map numerous types of data sets, including various types of housing stock, environmental elements, zip code areas, and more.

HUD User – A Picture Of Subsidized Housing 1996-present – this dataset describes the millions of households living in HUD-subsidized housing in the United States; provides characteristics of assisted housing units and residents, summarized at the national, state, public housing agency (PHA), project, and census tract levels; also includes summary data for Metropolitan Statistical Areas and cities; users can also create custom queries of the Picture data by geography and by HUD program to retrieve exact data.

National Map @ USGS – at first glance, this application looks like a typical online map viewer with a slightly more-complicated-than-usual interface, but don’t be fooled… it packs a real punch; see An ode to the National Map at the Race Equity Project for ideas about how to use this GIS application in advocacy work.

OnTheMap @ U.S. Census – online application to create detailed maps showing where people work and where workers live with companion reports on worker ages, earnings, industry distribution, and local workforce indicators).

Scorecard.org – among other online mapping features and statistical tools available here, you can enter a zip code and get a list of pollutants emitted in that area and who emits them; search by geographic area or company name; and find rankings for lead hazards, land contamination (Superfund) according to state, county or census tract. And there’s more! You can rank on country or state level and lists companies responsible; show degrees of environmental burdens felt by different racial and income groups in each county in English or Spanish; and allows you to rank the top issues in the designated area based on comparative risk projects.

Social Explorer – another national GIS mapping tool with more limited data sets, but interesting demos of how to effectively map data.

SNAP – Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Map Machine @ USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) – utilizing national-, state- and county-level data to layout Food Stamp (as well as some TANF) statistics, this web-based mapping utility generates maps in JPEG format illustrating program participation and benefit levels down to the county level, as well as per capita participation, per capita benefits, changes from year to year, and more.

Zip Code Mapping and Data Sets

Zip Code Resources Page @ Missouri – helpful explanations of the national zip code system and how it relates (or doesn’t) to other types of spatial information.

California Zip Codes @ AreaConnect – select your city and then select the city’s “zipcodes” and you get a numerical listing of corresponding zip codes, plus the latitude and longitude for each zip code. For example:

Race Equity Project GIS Tutorials

A case study of poverty advocacy and GIS – object lessons about how GIS and data analysis can be used as an amazingly effective advocacy tool; detailing not only how GIS allows advocates to capture and demonstrate the spatial component of poverty but also offers a method to capture the rare ground of being perceived as objective. positions.

GIS tutorial: identifying where low-income homeowners reside to direct foreclosure related services – teaches users how to use DataPlace, a web-based GIS application, to identify areas where substantial populations of LSC eligible homeowners reside and where substantial populations of LSC eligible homeowners of color reside. The provision of foreclosure related services to the areas identified would maximize the impact of the limited resources that LSC service providers can expend to address the variety of foreclosure issues faced by our client populations. (This tutorial requires a basic familiarity with Excel.)

Mapping HUD-Subsidized Housing – need to map the location of HUD-subsidized housing complexes? This tutorial, produced by HUD, walks users through the process of mapping HUD-subsidized housing complexes as points with ArcGIS. (This tutorial requires a working knowledge of ArcGIS.)